


Friendship might just be eight people fighting a clown

by neville



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: "It" AU, M/M, Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 19:06:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13130118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neville/pseuds/neville
Summary: Harry's life is relatively normal until the summer of 2017.





	Friendship might just be eight people fighting a clown

Harry’s life is relatively normal until the school year of 2017, when the school finds Neville Longbottom screaming in the courtyard, and he doesn’t stop until his voice cracks completely. Charlie gets the blame, of course: it  _ is _ his fault, letting students on his floor sneak out when a  _ student went bloody missing _ , but Harry’s not sure the fault lies on Charlie - he’s been sneaking into the Slytherin dorms for weeks on account of Draco wedging the fire door open for him, and on further account of Blaise Zabini never actually monitoring the corridor as he’s meant to.

“It is  _ completely _ my fault,” Charlie replies sternly at the breakfast table; while anyone else dealing with the slew of punitive measures Charlie is currently facing would probably lose their appetite, he is a true Weasley and wolfing down his beans on toast. “You’re trustworthy enough to let out, but Neville…”

Neville is in the local hospital, apparently babbling about having seen a clown.

Okay, maybe some blame  _ does _ lie in Charlie, though it’s certainly not Charlie’s fault that Dudley Dursley went missing, and  _ absolutely _ not his fault that apparently there’s a clown stalking the campus.

Because Harry is no longer allowed to sneak out by a far-stricter Charlie, the next time he sees Draco is in their music class; the only reason they’ve both ended up in music, really, is a lack of subjects they enjoy. Draco’s been playing classical guitar for something to do since first year, though Harry’s having to crash course percussion, and thankfully, it’s a practical lesson: they’re all sitting on tables and scribbling notes on their sheet music and doing little of real value. Harry, in particular, is improvising a jazzy marimba solo in the key of D (apparently).

“I knew he wasn’t right in the head, but I didn’t know he was that bad,” Draco says dryly.

“I don’t know,” says Harry, shaking his head. “Neville’s always seemed pretty okay, just a bit forgetful… Something’s not right about all this.”

“Are you suggesting we have a kidnapper dressed as a clown?”

“Shut up, Draco.”

“I’m deathly serious, Potter.” Draco grins mischievously, and Harry rolls his eyes, tapping Draco on the head with a beater. “Ouch! That was a lethal blow, Potter!  _ Lethal _ !”

In first year, Harry probably would’ve suspected Draco of being the kidnapper; in first year, Harry would’ve blamed Draco for anything, deciding immediately that he must be the Antichrist. Now, if there  _ were  _ an Antichrist, Draco’d be the first person Harry would call for help.

-

_ harry trotter:  _ i saw it   
_ harry trotter:  _ the clown is real   
_ harry trotter:  _ draco i’m scared

-

Neville comes back to school after passing his psychological evaluations, and by the time he has, Harry’s practically formed a Mickey Mouse Club House of people who saw it, too. “That’s what we should call it,” Seamus says airily at their lunchtime meeting, toying with his vanilla yogurt. “It. Like, with a capital I. It’s too fucking creepy to name.” Neville joins them immediately, and moves from his highly-desired single room in with Charlie, too nervous to be on his own. 

“I just want It gone,” he says. “Forever. I don’t want to see It again.” 

“You’re fucking right,” Lee nods. “We’re gonna kill whatever the hell It is, and make sure it stays dead.”

It’s not the most solid of pacts, but it’s one they agree on, sitting eight strong round the table: one they’d do anything to see through to its bitter end, their ragtag group of people who’ve seen and people who haven’t. In the end, it’s not really for any of them about the clown: it’s about fear, and the friendship that clasps them close, away from what hurts. It’s about the people, the connections, not being the odd one out everywhere they go. 

They hold hands when they swear on their newfound goal, and Harry swears that, for a minute, their heartbeats seem to feel like one.

But of course, It can’t have unity.

-

_ vance malfoy:  _ i saw It   
_ vance malfoy:  _ fuck, harry, It looked like you at first   
_ vance malfoy:  _ and then it got right in charlie’s face and spat blood on him and charlie is haemophobic and i don’t know where he went, he just ran  
_ harry trotter:  _ oh shit  
_ harry trotter:  _ our whole fucking dorm is up cuz it was in seamus’s room, his stuff looks like it was all torched   
_ harry trotter:  _ but mcgonagall can’t see it  
_ vance malfoy:  _ harry you know i’m not one for fond declarations of affection, but if anything happens to us, i want you to know that you mean a lot to me and i think i might love you  
_ harry trotter _ : i love you too, but i don’t know if that’ll be much consolation if a clown kills me 

-

“It has a name,” Remus announces, a fortnight later; it’s been quiet since, and Charlie and Seamus have slowly begun to reintegrate themselves into their classes and lives: at lunchtimes, Harry and Draco have taught them bits and bobs of piano and guitar and drumkit, and after school they’ve been honorarily inducted into multiple clubs and recreational activities. Like nothing has ever happened, they welcome the staunch support. “The clown form, anyway. Hermione Granger helped me find it - she’s very concerned about us, which is very sweet - and we found records of a clown called Pennywise.” 

“It sounds like an investment firm,” Draco snorts. Harry stifles a laugh. 

“Investment firm or fear-inducing shapeshifting creature, It seems to appear every twenty-seven years - there were disappearances twenty-seven years ago, too, when this was still an all-girls school. But, we don’t really know where It lives or takes its victims.” 

“My vote is the circus, because Pennywise is a creepy fucking bastard,” Sirius says sagely; Remus doesn’t bat an eyelid. 

“ _ My  _ vote is that we find out where It lives,” says Charlie. Sirius is outvoted, seven to one. 

They don’t really have a plan, either. 

-

They’re allowed out to town on the weekend again provided that, according to school administration, they go in groups of four or more, and which means that the eight of them are actively  _ encouraged  _ to go. The school administration, of course, has no idea that they’re about to chase their greatest fear, which could also probably kill them; Seamus proposes that they probably wouldn’t be too happy about that. 

For the most part, it’s a nice day of walking and chatting: after all, they have no idea where they’re meant to be going. Pennywise could live in the woods or the big house on Neibolt, for all they know. 

(It turns out to be the latter, actually.) 

They find out when they lose Neville. He’s there, and then he’s  _ not _ , and Charlie hurriedly rounds the corner back to Neibolt and the door slams as his boot screeches along the asphalt. “Oh,  _ shit _ .” 

Tonks picks the lock in a matter of moments with a bobby pin from her crowning nest of them, shoving the door open to a yawning hallway lined with dust bunnies and a deafening wall of silence. 

“Someone should stay outside,” Seamus ventures immediately. “You know, in case anything happens.” 

Nobody takes the time to object as they push into the house: it splits into the corridor, a stairwell, and a dark room with a half-open door, and they split with it - Charlie, Sirius, and Remus steam up the stairs as Harry and Draco press forwards and Tonks veers to the left. 

Harry slides his hand into Draco’s as they edge through the dark. 

The door at the end of the corridor creaks open to reveal what might once have been a living room, with cobwebbed sofas and a set of windows lighting the thick layer of dust in the air. The floorboards above them groan as someone moves across them and cough out yet more dust and a few woodlice. Draco’s grip tightens. 

“What’s wrong?” Harry asks, glancing over. Draco’s face is pale. 

“I don’t like insects,” he whispers, and Harry follows his gaze upwards: where there had been the odd woodlouse, now there are hundreds emerging from the gaps in the walls and the ceilings, accompanied by fat cockroaches and long-legged spiders crawling lazily towards them, an abominable horde that stops Draco’s breathing. “Oh, fuck, there are so many of them.” 

Harry’s not sure he likes them, either, but with as much resolve as he can muster, he spins round, touching his palms to Draco’s cheeks and holding him, catching his gaze. “They’re not real, Draco. None of this is real, okay? This is just It trying to scare you.”

“It’s okay for you to say that! Your biggest fear isn’t fucking crawling towards you!” Draco screams, voice cracking as his eyes dart to the side, but Harry keeps his grip firm. 

“Not right now, maybe! But you know it’s not real! Wherever that thing - It, Pennywise - is, it’s not with us right now, and those bugs aren’t real, and we’re not going to be scared because then we’re just giving in!” 

“Is it really such a cop-out to be scared?”

“Right now, bloody yes!” 

Draco pulls in a slightly steadier breath, and as he does, the ceiling at the other side of the room cracks open like a vortex and Neville slams to the floor with a sickening  _ thump _ , floppy. “Oh,  _ bloody shit _ ! When do we get to catch a fucking break?”

“We just had a break,” Harry points out as he pushes his thumb into Neville’s neck, finding the steady thump of his heartbeat. “For two weeks. He’s okay.” 

Draco eyes Neville’s arm, which looks less okay than the rest of him, contorted at an angle. “It wasn’t really a break. Not when everyone was like that.” 

The fridge in the corner of the room pops open, and two red eyes stare out. Draco makes a noise that sounds like both a brand new expletive and utter terror. Harry, too, suddenly wants to catch a break, paralysed as an arm comes out, and then a leg, and Pennywise draws himself out and to his intimidating height, grinning down at them with blood-red lips. 

“I should’ve gone to Eton,” Draco remarks. 

“Then you would never have met me,” Harry says. Draco nods. 

“That’s true. But being with you isn’t exactly going to prevent my death by this fucking clown.”

“Sorry about that.”

“You’d bloody better be, Potter.” 

-

There’s no-one in the world quite like Charlie Weasley, and really no-one in the world quite like Charlie Weasley armed with a floorboard and a vendetta.

“I’m gonna fucking kill you,” he snarls. 

He doesn’t. But he bloody well  _ tries _ . 

-

They don’t talk about the house on Neibolt, and they don’t talk to each other; the group drifts. They haven’t killed Pennywise, sure, but Neville’s arm is broken and no-one wants to remember how close to death they could’ve been had Charlie not emerged like a vengeful angel; besides that, they seem to have been left alone. Nobody else has gone missing and they haven’t seen a thing: they’re edgy at their bedsides, and Seamus’s room still smells like a barbecue gone wrong, and yet the world has gone back to being altogether quiet. 

In fact, the most excitement that occurs is the school hosts one of its pupil-run music shows; it’s the closest the group come to being back together. Charlie plays electric guitar and sings a particularly folk-sounding song called  _ Shakedown _ , and in lieu of being able to find a keyboard player, Draco is given the music and a synthesizer. It’s not his usual thing - Draco plays  _ classical _ guitar and  _ classical _ piano, but his music teacher insists that learning how to swing will do him good. The concert is, really, the result of pushy music teachers insisting that students demonstrate their ‘talent’ and get practise in performance before their exams, and through the lack of instruments represented, Draco has to play for more than one person. 

He plays piano for a performance of  _ Sinnerman _ , and, as he sits during the interval, where it’s Sirius playing guitar and a certain Lavender Brown tearing up the drumkit, he begins to wonder why they left Pennywise in limbo.

They could’ve killed him. It. And instead, they’re just  _ waiting _ ; waiting for the next twenty-seven years, waiting until he disappears and leaves them alone and returns to kidnap a new generation. They’re just running, instead of doing anything about it. 

“Hey, Draco,” Neville says nervously in the wings, twiddling his thumbs; Draco didn’t even  _ know _ Neville took music, but he’s in another class, a shy cellist always tucked at the back during Christmas concerts. “What - do you do? When you’re scared?” 

“Stop focusing on the fear,” Draco answers. “And focus on playing. Think about how much you’re enjoying playing. If you feed the fear, you’re giving in to it.”

He thinks, quite suddenly, that that might be very wise advice. 

He watches as Neville heads onstage, gripping the neck of his cello with white-knuckled force, grinning nervously as he sits down, one hand caressing the top of the instrument as the other holds the bow. Draco can almost hear his stuttered breath as someone adjusts the microphone, bringing it closer to Neville’s face, and that’s when he realises that Neville is about to do something Draco’s never seen before: sing and play the cello. He’s taking a bold step into a brave world - one that’s brave for him, anyway. 

Draco is almost  _ envious _ of the girl perched cheerily at the synthesizer, ringing out the first few notes.

“ _ I see the signs of a lifetime, you til I die; and I’m swiftly out, Irish goodbye… _ ” 

-

_ vance malfoy:  _ do you ever get the feeling we’re cowards? 

-

It’s not a  _ choice _ to reform when Draco goes missing: nobody is willing to let him die on their inaction, and with the kind of furiously nervous energy that seems to surround teenagers in a neurotic aura, they set out, the most unlikely group since The Breakfast Club. 

Charlie plays basketball for the school team and Remus is a youth-award-winning archer, so it’s not an issue for either of them: they have keys to the P.E. facility, and stuff away cricket bats and bows and anything that looks like it could cause any sort of serious injury in a bag, a pick ‘n’ mix of deadly makeshift weapons. 

They don’t sneak so much as walk out of school, determined. Harry would rather die than let Draco. 

-

“Oh fuck, that’s dark.” 

Seamus stares into the abyss that is the basement of the house on Neibolt, and swallows. He can see the first step down, but not a single one after. Tonks shines a wind-up pig torch into the darkness, and illuminates the second step. “You’ve got it, Finny boy. Take them one at a time; that’s what my dad always said when I fell down the stairs.” 

“I’m more concerned about whatever the fuck is  _ down _ those stairs,” Seamus says nervously. 

“Move,” Remus sighs, rolling his eyes; it’s not so easy for him to circumnavigate the stairs, not with a bow strapped to his back, but the fear is going to boil him over into paralysis if he doesn’t hurry, and, with the short-lived bravery that he usually feels after looking at Sirius Black, he lowers one foot down, and then the other, and slowly moves downward until even the last wisp of his hair is gone and all that’s left of him is his voice, floating upward. “I’m still alive. Tonks, can you come down? I can’t bloody see.” 

“Got it,” she says, shoving the torch into her mouth as she almost leaps into the hole, spitting out as her feet finally touch down on solid ground. She winds the torch a little more, shining out into the darkness: they’re in some kind of tunnel, and it’s wet, the sound of dripping emanating from further in. “Oi! You can come down now!”

Seamus stares nervously at Harry. “Fuck, Harry. It’s dark.” 

“I know, Shay,” Harry says, biting his bottom lip. “But - Draco’s down there. And he’s my boyfriend, and you’re his friend. He’s one of us. We have to get him.” 

“Promise me you won’t let that clown bastard get me,” Seamus asks, holding out his pinky. 

“I’ll do my best,” Harry nods, and closes his pinky around Seamus’s; Charlie leans in, too, as does Neville, their hands all clasped round each other, their fear palpable in their sweaty palms and short breaths. “We’re going to survive, Seamus. And we’re going to do our bloody best.” 

He swings down the stairs, and Seamus follows. Charlie talks Neville all the way down to the tunnel, and when Neville’s boots finally touch the damp floor, takes his hand. “I’ve got you,” he says, and they turn to the encroaching darkness. 

-

“ _ Charlie _ !” 

Charlie spins on his heel, heart stilling at the scream, because he knows that voice: that’s Neville, and that’s Neville screaming as if he’s on his deathbed: thoughtless, he bolts into the dark, the rest of the group left to scramble after him. Charlie didn’t even  _ notice _ Neville let go, slip away, follow a sign that no-one else saw, and the guilt roars up his throat as his torch lights up a scene he’ll never forget as long as he lives. 

Neville is being  _ eaten _ by Pennywise, and even when the clown darts backward, there are teeth marks in Neville’s face; his eyes are wide and pupils blown wide as saucers, tears streaming down his face as he crawls for Charlie, howling bitterly. 

“ _ You let go _ !” he’s screaming, so loudly that Charlie can’t hear anything else, and he’s trying to hold Neville and it’s not working, everything is loud and Charlie thinks that he’s going to die just of sheer  _ sorrow _ -

and, as everything is happening, Sirius starts to walk away. 

-

As it goes, Draco isn’t keen for death. Sirius finds him hanging by the skin of his teeth, armed only with a maths textbook, swearing very emphatically at Pennywise.

Maybe it’s not the first thing he’d think of when he thought of the word  _ brave _ , and yet this is what it means: facing his fear, David in the face of Goliath, a boy holding on to everything that means the world to him. 

“Look at him,” Harry says, eyes twinkling. “That’s my boyfriend. Beating up a clown.”

“What a moment,” Charlie says dryly, tossing harry a baseball bat and giving him a wink. “Go get him, Harry. We’re going to kill this fucking clown.” 

Harry thinks he might be very, very much in love: with Draco, of course, but this moment, when the fear is gone and all he is is  _ proud _ and brave, Neville surging up at his side with the fearlessness of not thinking about what’s scaring him. He loves his friends, this group, loved sitting around eating meals with them, loved teaching them to play instruments when they hit rock bottom, loved watching them blossom and come out of their shells, loved watching Tonks plait Sirius’s hair and Remus read books and Seamus blow things up in Chemistry. 

And when he’s with them, he’s not afraid. 

-

Because there’s no time like the present, Neville tells Charlie that he’s in love the minute they return to the street outdoors, and Tonks buys everyone a McDonald’s. 

-

 

Harry’s life returns to a semblance of normality just in time for the October break; Charlie invites the group to stay with his family for the holidays, and, in the wake of just having come together to murder a homicidal kidnapping clown, they decide that it’s probably a good idea to support each other, and all take the train together to Devon. 

It’s their usual mayhem: Tonks buys far too many snacks for the journey, Remus’s newspaper takes up the whole table, Sirius wants to be antisocial and listen to music, and they don’t even all fit all around one table on the train. 

But Harry thinks he rather likes it. He’s had friends, sure, but never friends like this: friends he just  _ connects _ with, people he feels like he  _ understands _ .

“What are you thinking?” Draco asks, leaning over. “Is it about me?”

“No,” Harry says. “Not everything I think is about you.”

“It should be,” Draco says, and he grins, and everything is normal again. 

That’s the way Harry likes it, he thinks. He doesn’t like clowns.

**Author's Note:**

> Secret Santa gift for @festiveazkaban on Tumblr! Merry Christmas, Phoenix!


End file.
